Ignore all rules
| The following page documents an official global policy. This page has been elaborated and approved by the community and its compliance is mandatory for all projects. It must not be modified without prior community approval. |  |
Ignore all rules is one of the oldest wiki guidelines, not only on Wikimedia wikis but on the early wikis whose creators and editors contributed mightily to the founding of Wikipedia. It is considered policy on the English Wikipedia, and has been the subject of many essays there and here. It is embodied in the following statement:
Some of the changes to Wiki editing over the years have hedged slightly against this guideline—the creation of user accounts, of page history, of formal policies rather than sets of related essays. IAR is directly opposed to the principle of wikibureaucracy that harmful behavior should be prevented by forcing users to strictly adhere to a set of regulations.